CSI: Crime Scene Investigation introduced many Americans to the use of DNA testing to solve murder cases. Now, the show has helped a woman from Spain solve a murder. According to CBS News, Carmen Moreno discovered a pile of bloody tissues in Maria Luisa Park in Seville, where she has swept up leaves and picked up trash for 28 years. Authorities believed these belonged to a woman who died of a drug overdose, but Moreno thought that there was too much blood for that to be true. So this is what she did:
Following what she saw on TV, she demonstrated how she used plastic bags to carefully collect the evidence without contaminating it and stored it — just in case police ever needed it.
When an autopsy later proved the woman likely died from being violently raped, police couldn’t believe they tossed vital evidence and were more stunned to learn Moreno held on to it.
Police then caught a suspect because Moreno saved the evidence without contaminating it. So who should we thank for the solving of this crime? Moreno of course, and her love of CSI; the show, probably, for being at least somewhat accurate; and globalization and American hegemony, because how else did that get syndicated in Spain?
(via CBS News)